THE TUC Congress was dominated by the growing mass anger of the working class at the Tory-led coalition policy of wage freezing and massive austerity.
On Monday, Composite Motion 1 was carried calling for coordinated strike action over wages and jobs.
On Tuesday, after Balls intervened to say that he would carry on with Tory wage freezing, Congress overwhelmingly carried a resolution calling for the ‘examination of the practicalities of a general strike’.
On Tuesday shadow Chancellor Balls was booed when he made clear that the Labour slogan was jobs not wages, the slogan of every slave labour employer, and that he was opposed to a 1980’s style confrontation with the Tories, and was even opposed to getting rid of the labour capability assessment test which victimises the disabled.
He was challenged by a Unison member, Liz Cameron, who declared ‘Public sector workers are going through a third year of pay freeze. Why is it we hear you and Ed Miliband support this Tory pay freeze, while I have to choose between buying my children new school uniforms, putting the heating on or food on the table?’ ‘How can you get the respect of public sector workers when you continue to support that position.’
The battle lines were clearly drawn – against a Tory-led coalition’s wage freezing and class war, that has the support of the Labour opposition.
After Balls’ declaration of solidarity with the Tories, the Congress had no alternative but to back the motion to examine ‘the practicalities of a general strike.’
However the matter did not, and does not rest there.
Unison, in its press statement commenting on Balls’ intervention at the Congress, was generally favourable to him, and does not mention his clash with their leading member.
In fact it states: ‘If he really understood the massive impact of a three-year pay freeze on families struggling to pay for food and fuel, or forced to turn to pay-day loans where interest can be a terrifying 4000% – he too would be calling for an end to the pay freeze.’
The Unison leaders are covering up for Balls, who is not stupid and understands perfectly what Liz Cameron put to him. Balls understands that if capitalism is to get back onto its feet the working class has to be starved, and since Labour supports capitalism it will continue with this Tory policy.
In fact Balls has made it very clear that he favours replacing the Tory-LibDem coalition led by Cameron and Clegg with a Labour-LibDem coalition led by Miliband and Cable, and carrying on with the job of making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism.
Unison agrees in its statement with Balls that it also does not want a return to the 1980s.
In the 1980s Thatcher was the conscious aggressor and the workers had to defend themselves.
Today the Tories are once again the aggressors and must be confronted and defeated. There is a war on. To say no return to the 1980s is to say surrender unless the union leaders are prepared to go further than the 1980s and call a general strike to smash the coalition.
These leaders are however in favour of a Labour-LibDem coalition.
Workers must now help their trade unions examine the practicalities of a general strike by organising it to bring down the coalition.
Councils of Action must be set up in every area to organise the masses of the people to occupy hospitals and all workplaces that are threatened with closure, to stop all cuts and closures, to fight rising prices with mass strike actions, and to demand that the TUC set the date for a general strike.
Millions must be brought out to march on October 20th and the struggle must begin inside the trade unions to remove all those leaders who will not break with the policies of Balls and Miliband.
Above all, now is the time to join and build the WRP. A revolutionary situation requires a revolutionary leadership, in the trade unions in particular, and this is now what must be built.
